Behind Closed Doors
by Luna Lovegood5
Summary: She knew it was coming. She'd known it ever since they lost the TARDIS. Set around halfway through The Impossible Planet. The Doctor decides to go down into the pit.


**Behind Closed Doors**

**A/N:** This is the fourth of thirteen completely unconnected stories I plan to write during the course of series three, all of which will be Doctor/Rose centric and probably rather shippy, lest the certain deluge of Martha eps and fics to come allows us to forget how wonderful the two of them were together. I'll post a new one a few days after each S3 episode is aired.

--

Night – if one can call it that, on a space station a million miles from any sort of sun – falls and the practicalities of the situation take over.

It's mere minutes after Scooti's death and drilling has only just finished. Most of the crew are eager to get down there, to explore the planet and get this mission over with, especially after what has just happened to their youngest member. Then Zack points out that, by his watch, it's 2 o'clock in the morning Earth time, and what the Captain says goes. Even Jefferson has to agree that none of them could possibly function properly, let alone to the best of their ability, right now, so travelling down to the centre of the planet and trying to locate and identify an unnatural, impossible power source probably isn't the wisest thing to do at this moment in time. They are all sent to their various quarters, told to rest until another classical composition denotes the shift into daytime and the start of the real work.

So. An impromptu tour is given for the newcomers while everyone else lies restlessly over their bedcovers and waits anxiously for morning, for the end of this hell to begin. The Doctor's put on the laundry rosta, and Rose noted down for washing up. It's not long before they've seen the whole of the place, possibly even twice over – Ida is very thorough – and they're being led down a smoking corridor to spare living quarters. Rose tries not to think about how they're probably going to be assigned dead men's beds. Instead, she takes the Doctor's hand in what she hopes is a reassuring manner, offering up a smile that might just be more for her own benefit than his. There's no return curve of his lips. He doesn't notice, or if he does he doesn't show it. He's too busy scanning his own thoughts, hoping against hope that he can come up with a way for them to get the TARDIS back, to get home.

--

They're put in the same room.

The Doctor is too preoccupied to care, and Rose doesn't have the heart to correct Ida when she points them to the almost-double bed in the bare chamber, apologising for the size. It feels a bit like being inside a box. They've all been so nice, offering the two travellers a lift home – or as close to home as they can get – and a place to stay while they're here. Jefferson could have just thrown them out of an airlock the second they arrived, but he didn't. She doesn't want to cause a fuss. All she wants is to go home (though whether "home" constitutes the Powell Estate or the TARDIS, she isn't quite sure anymore), and the best way to do that is just shut up, agree to the room and hope for this to all be over by morning.

It's even smaller with the door shut. It's a good job neither of them are claustrophobic, Rose reflects, scanning her eyes around the cold, square walls and half-feet of space between them and the furniture. Aside from the practical, grey-covered bed, a small, orange lamp set into the far wall is the only feature.

Rose leans against the now-shut door and watches the Doctor sit himself in the middle of the bed, crossed-legged and as bleak as the walls around them, mind obviously working furiously behind the façade. There are no words, from either of them. Neither knows what to say. Besides, speech seems quite pointless at a moment like this, making such an unnatural silence between them feel almost appropriate.

It's not so bad, she thinks. Maybe they're in an era now where basic time travel has been invented. Maybe they won't be stuck. They never did ask the year, after all. Maybe, if she keeps offering up enough maybes, she'll actually find one she believes in. Maybe _(please)_, now that the drilling has finished, they'll go down and find the TARDIS again.

She's about to say this aloud when the Doctor flops onto his back, utterly defeated, and stretches his legs out along the bed with a frustrated sigh, pulling at his hair with clenched fists. She takes the three, tiny steps required to cross the room and reach the bed, trying not to think about the floor grille beneath her feet. It's lit from underneath, white light spilling eerily into the room. The colour's all wrong.

Rose scrambles onto the bed, skipping straight past sitting to lie on her side next to him, propped up on her elbow with a hand flat on the covers in the space between them. She resists the urge to reach out and touch him, knowing it would be more for her own comfort than his benefit.

Minutes pass in which she is content to fiddle with a lose thread in the duvet, pretending she's not watching him gaze at the ceiling as though it holds the answers to all their problems. In fact, she suspects he's just eyeing the lose panel in the design, unfocussed, thinking about everything else that's broken right now.

The lights dim in the ship as a sterile, female voice announces they are entering the second stage of night shift. Classical music she vaguely recognises from forced school assemblies floats through the base, making her frown as she tries to place it.

"Debussy. Clair de Lune," the Doctor says, suddenly, breaking the relative silence without taking his eyes off the ceiling.

Now she remembers. She takes the pressure off her elbow and drops to the mattress, lying on her back instead, yawning slightly as she gets comfortable and tries to find what's so absorbing about the ceiling. It does little to take her mind off all they have lost and all they still yet stand to lose. For the first time in what could be hours, he turns to her.

"Tired?"

"Just a bit. Don't think I've slept since the Middle Ages," she tells him, laughing slightly and knowing there's nothing funny about any of it.

The Doctor raises an arm from his side, smiling almost regretfully. Rose takes the invitation and scuttles closer, rolling onto her side again and curling into him, face pressed into his shoulder against the remaining light. His arm lies awkwardly over her, hand coming round to rest on her waist. She hopes he won't get pins and needles; he's too stubborn to move.

The room seems warmer, somehow, even though he's colder than everything else in it. She's been dead on her feet for hours, pre-made exhaustion intensified by all that's happened since. This was only supposed to be a quick trip. A bit of fun. Now she might never even see her mum again.

Too exhausted to contemplate that further, Rose drifts off, content that the Doctor will sort everything out, make everything right again. He always does. Doesn't he?

--

She awakes to a poke in the stomach and a slightly indignant exclamation of, "Oi! Do you mind not kneeing me in the side?" as whatever she's been lying on jumps reflexively away.

"Mm?" Rose raises her head from where she's buried her eyes in the Doctor's shoulder, away from the world, and takes a minute to place herself, head swimming with disorientation. There are no lights now; they must have gone out with the end of the music. She can barely see her own hand in front of her face, let alone any of him.

"Oh!" His presence reminds her of their location. The happy, comfortable feeling that descended with sleep deserts her. "Sorry." She stops moving and flops her head back down as the Doctor moves back to his original position. "How long was I out for?"

"Not sure," he says, his mind obviously on other things – and who can blame him? It worries her that time can escape him, though. Normally, the Doctor knows every tiny, insignificant event right down to the millisecond before she even has to ask him to work it out. "An hour, maybe two? Not long."

He's so distracted that he's not even bothered by his uncertain knowledge in a trivial area of a field that usually belongs to him and only him. He looks so forlorn that Rose can't help it this time – she reaches up and runs her hand through his hair, from root to tip, trying not to let her breath catch as he just looks on, solemn, before offering a weak, half-felt smile that she can just make out in the darkness.

Moving her hand down and pulling it back to herself, she returns the expression and closes her eyes, venturing to speak before she really knows the words.

"You know earlier," she begins, quietly, almost lazily, sleep overtaking her again, "when you said that the TARDIS is all you've got? Literally the only thing?"

The Doctor interrupts before she can go any further, sure he knows what she's going to say. "I didn't mean it like that. I – "

But two can play at that game. _She _cuts across _him_, now, eyes snapping open, eager to make him understand. She props her head up on her elbow in her earnestness. "No, I know. That's not what I was gonna say." He raises an eyebrow at her. "Seriously. I understand. It's home. It's Gallifrey."

Something about his planet's name on Rose's lips makes the Doctor shiver. Listening to someone so innocent utter his planet's name to the person responsible for its destruction is enchanting, beautiful, breath-stealing. And yet something about it is so _incredibly_ wrong, just like so much of their life together, that he can't help but feel guilty for laying his history on her all those months ago.

She's still talking, though, and he knows he has to stop looking at her like that if she's to continue and he's to hear the rest of it.

"And…I know I'm not…not a Time Lord or anything, not enough – "

"Don't say that." She's not Gallifreyan, it's true, but when had that ever stopped her being _enough _for him?

Rose pretends he didn't interrupt. " – But I'm here, yeah? I'm always gonna be here."

He doesn't tell her not to promise him forever like that. He can't bring himself to. Instead, he fights to stop himself believing it, fights to keep the slow smile off his face as he turns to look at the ceiling once again, because he can't possibly start having faith in something so impossible. He mustn't. It'll only tempt fate, bring the inevitable ever nearer, and he doesn't think he can bear to lose her if he's even remotely convinced that she will never leave.

--

"What was it like?" she asks, after a moment's silence, head on the pillow again as she watches him. "Gallifrey?"

There it is again, that feeling. He feels his hearts constrict in his chest as he looks at her across the covers, half-visible in the darkness, content and so very, very young. He never thought he'd hear his dead planet's name come from someone so alive. He thanks the universe for being kind, just this once, and letting him have her.

The Doctor ponders this for a minute. "Orange. Big. Pompous. Corrupt. Clean. Chock-full of ions, like Earth after a thunderstorm. Beautiful. Home, in a way. A fixed home, that is," he hurriedly explains, the words pouring out now that he's begun. "Not like the TARDIS. That's always been _home_, but…Gallifrey was fixed. My roots. Somewhere I could be called back to."

"Somewhere you could _go _back to," she counters, seeing through him in an instant, noting the slight hitch to his voice immediately. He didn't like it there, she knows that, he remembers that, but it was nice to have the option. More than nice to be without the guilt.

Rose understands. Of course she does. The Powell Estate is the same for her, even if it isn't drenched in her regrets or the blood of a thousand lives. It still holds a certain charm for her, a part of _home_, despite the fact that she's chosen another life now.

"I wish I could have seen it," she says, quietly, softly, taking his hand from his side and linking her fingers through his.

The Doctor freezes, sensing the sincerity of her words, rendered quite speechless by his inability to tell her how much he wishes he could have taken her there or how much her desire to see it means to him. It doesn't matter that the Time Lords probably wouldn't have let her set foot there anyway. It doesn't matter that they would certainly have disapproved of her vehemently. All that matters is Rose wants to see a part of him that was once home, and he wants to show it to her.

Before she can quite register that he's moving, he has rolled over, turning to face her and not even moving away when their legs get tangled and their noses bump. His hand is under her chin, gently tilting it up, and, for one wild, beautiful moment, she swears he's going to kiss her. Her eyelids flutter shut, more out of feeling unequal to meet his eye than anticipation, and she has to force herself to take a breath when she feels his forehead against hers, his skin burning despite its inherent coolness. If he senses her shiver, she hopes he knows that it's not because of the cold. The darkness surrounds them, envelops them, lovers clinging to each other in a sea of impossibility as a few insignificant seconds, snatched under the light of a black hole at the edge of the universe, slip into an eternity for both of them.

For a brief moment, face-to-face with him here in this bed as his fingers ghost over her skin, she feels she understands him much more than she ever has before, feels an equality of mind that she hasn't experienced since just before his regeneration. For the Doctor, words are apparently insufficient for expression in such a moment, and suddenly it's so very clear to her why that is. There should be a word for this, there should be _many _words for this, pain and calm and love and thrill and loss rolled into one, but there is nothing. She would quite happily drown in the exquisite ineffability of it all.

She tightens her hold over his hand, desperate to pull him nearer, to have every inch of his skin burning hers, but not quite able to gather up the courage to do so. This is closer than they've ever been, but it's still somehow not close enough. She aches for him, a huge part of her crying out to just move her head up that last centimetre, to do what she knows they've both wanted for so long and kiss him until even he stops hurting.

The Doctor's voice sounds out through the room, low and earnest in a place suddenly empty and silent again after so much rushing through her ears and so little use for noise.

"Oh, Rose. You would have loved it." No matter that she'd never have been allowed there, nevermind that the Time Lords would have been disgusted at his love for her. He can take her there with his words. "There were two suns." She feels the slightest of laughs tumbling over her skin. "Brilliant, beautiful, burning suns, that used to rise in opposite ends of the sky and end the day over the forests. They made the whole planet look as though it was about to burst into flame…"

Her eyes are closed, a light smile playing across her face as she obviously pieces together bits of the planets they've visited together to form her own, cobbled image of his home, trying to ignore his closeness and focus only on his voice. She's heard most of it before, of course, so it doesn't matter that he can't go on, that he's too consumed by his memories to finish his description. She tightens her grip on his hand in unspoken acknowledgement, and he squeezes back, grateful.

And then, so quiet that she only hears it because of the otherwise absolute silence of the base:

"You will always be enough, Rose Tyler. You make me forget."

Rose's eyes fly open, searching his for confirmation of what she's just heard. It's incredibly difficult to take that in when his lips are so close to meeting with her own that she swears she can feel them moving to form the words, and she can't quite believe that he's made such a declaration of his dependence upon her.

How can those few words from a man who speaks countless every minute all at once seem to hold far more meaning than anything else he has ever said to her? That, if anything, gives Rose the courage she was lacking earlier. She raises a hand to the Doctor's face, echoing his movement, his steady breath on her lips tying knots in her stomach, and pushes herself closer to him. Their joined hands rest in the slight dip between their hips as they lie flush against one another, legs in a jumbled mess, his spare hand in her hair and hers at his jaw. She tilts her head, amazed that he's letting her do this, that he even seems to be _encouraging _it, and his breath finally hitches, the first sign that he is as affected by all this as she is.

It's a jolt into awareness, a realisation of what she's about to do. Rose pulls back less than a centimetre, terrified she's doing the wrong thing but not wanting to break contact with him, not quite daring to believe it when his hand squeezes hers reassuringly. This isn't how it normally goes. They are, once again, split seconds away from crashing into a new life together, but he's not the type of man to let them have it, however much she wants it. She can barely dare to believe that they're here, doing this, but they _are_. They really are, and the way that just the slightest pursing of her lips brings her into contact with his proves it even if nothing else does.

"Doctor?" she whispers, gasping slightly as he takes his hand from hers and rests it instead at her waist, pulling her, if possible, even closer, his other hand still running through her hair. It's all so inexplicably _right_, being this close to him, being held and loved by him. Is that his breath or his lips touching hers now? She doesn't think she has enough mental coherence to tell anymore. She can feel his eyelashes as they flutter closed across her skin.

Then he blinks, moving his hands away and jerking his head down, near enough pushing her away as he mentally and physically distances himself from her, and the spell is broken. She'd ended up kissing his nose. He extricates himself from her hold – from the tangle he has, essentially, created himself – rolling over onto his back once more and creating a clear foot of space between them, clearly biting back the urge to cough and say, "_Anyway_!"

All the air is stolen from Rose's lungs and she feels like he's physically punched her in the gut.

She forces herself to close her mouth, quite wordless with shock, feeling completely ripped from him but knowing exactly where they stand. This is yet another thing they're going to pretend never happened, something to be swept under the rug and forgotten about, another forbidden memory and topic they're not allowed to broach, and she burns with the injustice of it all.

"I'm sorry."

"No," she says quickly, shocked at the sound of his voice. She lies stiff on her back, staring up at the ceiling, forcing the words through her lips. "It's OK."

That, though, is life with the Doctor. She learnt that lesson a long time ago. Take it or leave it. Make do and move on. Want more, but don't expect it.

"It's not. I should never have…" He trails off.

_You kissed me in Rome, _she wants to say, but she can't bring herself to make that an accusation. What comes out instead is, "I know." He doesn't get close to his companions, doesn't get involved – though Rose is privately rather convinced that the two of them couldn't get _more _involved, short of actually getting that mortgage together. She was blind to think that things could ever be another way. Even out here with death staring them in the face and their very existence defying all the laws of physics, he will never change.

She can't look at him, but she can breathe again, and she berates herself for being so stupid, for getting so caught up in him. For allowing him to get so carried away with the moment and almost let her do something she knows he would regret. Of course the Doctor was never going to give in and kiss her. She's pretty sure that the world might explode if he did that. He certainly seems to think so.

--

"It's weird, without the drills," Rose says, for lack of anything else to comment on. It takes a lot of effort to sound flippant after what just happened, but she's quite proud of how steady her voice comes out. She fights against the urge to look at him and keeps her gaze firmly on the ceiling, determined that if he can find something interesting enough about roof-tiles to keep his eyes trained on them for this amount of time then so can she.

"They'll be sending Ida down in the morning," the Doctor tells her. "Then that's it. Mission closed. They go home and we go…"

He trails off, not quite able to face up to the possibility of a normal life on a normal planet when there's still the faintest ray of hope left, and she knows what he's going to say next. She's known it was coming ever since they lost the TARDIS. She flexes her fingers, suddenly empty and cold without his safe there between them.

"I'm going to have to go down with her. You know that, don't you? You did realise?"

Knowing that he's turned his head, Rose can't help but do the same and almost regrets it when she finds herself the object of the Doctor's close scrutiny. "Yeah."

Her hollow tone doesn't escape him. "I have to, Rose. It's the one chance we have of getting the TARDIS back. And even if I don't find it," he says, in the kind of tone that suggests he's adamant this won't happen, "I need to know what's down there. This planet shouldn't be here. That power source is bigger than anything man will go on to create in the entire history of time. It's not natural, whatever Toby says about ancient civilisations. Something about all this just doesn't add up, and I _have_ to find out what it is."

She can't say anything. It's impossible to know how to reply when a thousand arguments are racing through her head, battling with the knowledge that nothing she says will change his mind and still reeling from being so close to him earlier.

_I'm coming with you. _You can't.

_Can't you just let Ida find the TARDIS? Can't you stay up here with me? Safe? _No-one else can fly her. We'd have no way of getting her back up to the surface.

_Don't go. _I have to.

_Can't you stop holding back for once and just kiss me?_ No.

Every argument has a counter-argument, every protestation a response, and they both know it.

"Be careful," she manages eventually, knowing she has no real right to ask him to stay. She wouldn't dare, anymore than she'd dare to purposefully wall him up in a house with a mortgage and carpet and doors, not when there's another option. It would be killing the very essence of him.

"Always," he grins, and she can't help but smile back, rolling her eyes at his love of trouble.

It fades quickly. "Isn't there any way I could – "

"No." The Doctor's answer is clear and firm. There's no room for mistaking his intentions _here_. "I'm sorry, Rose, but I can't let you. I have no idea what's down there; none of us do. I can't put you in that much danger," he says, and though she knows the matter is closed, she can't help but push it.

"You put me in danger every day," she retorts, sitting up suddenly in her incredulity. She turns to face him, leaning back on one arm and gesturing with the other. "It's what we do. I've never asked you to wrap me up in cotton wool and pretend like I don't want to be here, like I can't handle any of this stuff. Just let me come _with_ you."

"This is different." Rose opens her mouth to protest but he cuts across her, eyes earnest, willing her to understand. "These people are trained in deep space exploration. You're not."

"Oh, come on, that's not fair," she protests, well aware that she'd be fine with him there to guide her. She's not trained in fighting aliens, either, but she manages _that _on a daily basis. The real reason he's stopping her, she knows, is because he's scared. For once, he has absolutely no idea of what they're up against, and that scares him to death.

But don't they face the unknown every day, too? Isn't that what they were doing here in the first place?

Oh, she's not denying the danger of it. She knows this is somehow darker than anything else they've yet encountered, knows they're woven inextricably into something that terrifies more than just her, but that's all the more reason, in her eyes, for them to stay together.

The Doctor sighs. This is an argument she's never going to win – a fact of which they are both well aware – but he can't blame her for trying. "I need you to stay here. If something happens to me – "

Rose presses her lips together, forcibly reminded of the last time they held a conversation like this. Ten minutes later, he was dead and the man currently sharing this bed with her had replaced him. She takes both of his hands in hers, forgetting all her earlier awkwardness and mental promises to never touch him again, suddenly incredibly aware that this is no normal expedition. It's not going to be as simple as go down, find the power source and come back up, home in time for reunion hugs and a good cup of tea. "Please, Doctor," she begs quietly, "if you think that something's going to – "

"If something happens to me," he repeats, following suit and sitting up too, his eyes wide and eyebrows raised to emphasise his point, "then you'll be safe up here. The crew can take you…" He's going to say home, she knows, before he realises that's an impossibility. "You can find that planet, live that life. You'll be fine."

"Without you?"

"If you have to."

Rose swallows, knowing she's lost but desperate not to accept the idea of a reality without him on a strange planet in a strange time full of people she won't know. She could manage it, she's sure, if she had to, but she doesn't _want_ to have to.

"You won't let that happen though, will you? Doctor? Tell me you won't let that happen."

The Doctor reaches up, brushing tears that are yet to come off her cheeks, his hand lingering at her jawline. "I'll do everything in my power to make sure it doesn't come to that. I promise you, Rose. If there's a way back to you, I will find it. And when I do, I need you to be here. I need to have something to come back for."

She is silent, her eyes too blurred to focus on him properly. And, eventually, she gives in, nodding wordlessly before he pulls her to him completely.

--

A new melody signals morning, one neither of them pay any attention to. He gets up without a word, hands lingering within hers as he heads for the door before she knows she has to let him go. She loosens her grip; her hands drop into her lap, and he's already out of sight.

The next time she sees him, he's wearing a spacesuit and she has less than a minute to make her goodbyes, knowing full well that they could be forever.

"_I promise you, Rose. If there's a way back to you, I will find it."_

She kisses his helmet, a silent promise that she understands, that she trusts him to come back, and she watches him go.


End file.
